There is not a shred of truth in a British report that London had been secretly asked if it would be able to host the 2016 Olympics in the midst of Rio de Janeiro’s delays in preparation, an International Olympic Committee spokesman said Friday.

The Evening Standard reported, “an informal approach was made by Olympics bosses to discover whether enough venues from the triumphant 2012 London Games could be brought back into use.”

The newspaper reported Brazil had done 10 percent of Olympic prep work at a comparable stage to when London had 60 percent completed before the 2012 Olympics. It also said the chances of London actually being asked to host the 2016 Games were “infinitesimally small,” citing unnamed sources close to the Olympic movement.

The report was “totally without foundation and totally unfeasible,” an IOC spokesman told The Associated Press.

No city has hosted back-to-back Olympics. Innsbruck, Austria, came the closest, hosting Winter Games in 1964 and 1976.

I wonder what the IOC will do if Rio does not complete the facilities in time. Do they even have a back up plan or are they simply doing a lot of praying right now. One would think that with the situation as bad as it is in Rio that they would be working on a contingency plan to move the games should it become necessary. There is also the issue of the severe pollution of the water where the sailing events are supposed to be held. It is so bad that it would be a health hazard for the small boat sailors to complete. The Rio games committee has said that they are trying to clean up the pollution but you really wonder how much they can get done on that front with only two years to go before the games. Rio was a terrible choice to begin with. They have to build virtually all of the facilities from scratch since they had little in the way of suitable infrastructure to start with. It is looking increasingly unlikely that they can have the facilities ready unless they get a lot of outside help. I wonder when or if the IOC will start putting the pressure on other nations to help bail them out in order to avoid a major problem holding the games. I also wonder if there any chance of the games being postponed or cancelled if Rio does not get its act together.

The IOC is stuck. Pulling the Games from Rio would be a PR catastrophe. Rio would be left with a bunch of partially or even fully completed venues that had absolutely no use, they’d get zero of the travelers the Games would have brought in. Would the IOC owe Rio money for the Games not being there? And what about all the people who will have already planned to go to Rio? Would the IOC have to pay them back? Help them change travel plans to get to wherever the Games ended up?

I doubt they could realistically relocate the Games even if everything was on the up-and-up. But we all know that IOC members got paid off to give the Games to Rio in the first place, so you know those guys aren’t going to vote to move them now.

If they couldn’t handle it, Rio shouldn’t have bid. Now it’s too late. The only proper thing for the IOC to do is if Rio isn’t “ready” in time, cancel the games. That should be enough punishment for any other nation that can’t handle it to never bid again.